Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (8 page)

“Well, they traded their safety for a kick ass method of attack. The Dismantlers have contoured event horizons and Jump safely too, but they also can expand their Jump Holes and tow large objects with them. I think we should retain that ability on our new ship designs.”

Thad butted in again. “Yeah, well, you be sure and pass that along to the design committee. In the meantime, how about less talk and you go kill that Ragnar son of a bitch.”

“Ooh. A bossy boss man. Since you asked me to kill something so sweetly, I’ll do it just for you.”

It proved to be much easier to promise than do, with that ship maneuvering unexpectedly, and making frequent micro Jumps, almost like the Kobani method of up-close spacecraft warfare. It occurred to Maggi that this commander, or his pilot, had learned a thing or two at Zanzibar. She was also growing frustrated with how slowly her commands were followed by the AI installed on the drone. With split seconds involved in her decisions, and seconds delay in their execution, she repeatedly missed an intersect or ramming effort, and her guesses of where to fire cannons at places she hoped he would next appear, had missed him completely, although she twice hit tumbling ships instead.

Abruptly, Thad had a warning. “That damaged Crusher just reappeared around the limb of the planet, moving towards us fast. Button up your helmets, and I’m going to start micro Jumps and maneuvering, to foil their targeting us again. I don't know how the hell they managed to do that anyway if they can’t see us.”

Maggi had been using her drone’s mass detectors to help identify the Ravager she was trying to kill. All Ravagers she’d detected were similar, but each presented a slightly different sensor pattern for the various high mass density regions for targeting a Nova. She didn’t have one of those bombs, but she could now recognize when she was detecting the particular Ravager she wanted, told apart from a half dozen others that were actively firing on their drones, and micro Jumping. With annoyance, she realized a ship she had just scanned wasn’t the ship she wanted. She was now certain the Ravager Thad had chosen really did carry the ranking Ragnar here, who was directing the increasingly effective Ragnar response to their attack. She sensed that he appeared to be aware of her drone’s interest in his ship. He was uncanny at slipping away from her.

She looked at fresh sensor mass readouts as she heard Thad’s final comment, when he wondered how the Crusher had detected them. It felt like a simulated forehead slap when she had the answer.

“Thad, think! The Decoherence bombs aren’t targeted with electromagnetic sensors. They look for mass density, which means being electromagnetically stealthed doesn’t prevent them sensing where our mass is distributed internally. It’s probably harder to find us without radar or visual guidance to narrow the search area, but they did it once. They’ll be trying to do it now. We can’t let that sucker get any closer.”

“Good point. We just lost another drone, and I don’t know if was the Crusher which just appeared that did it or not, but it seems too coincidental. We’ve done as much damage as we came to do, except erase that big bastard, and it looks like you can’t catch that damned Ravager anyway.” He had an inspiration.

“I have my drone’s Nova targeted on a mass concentration in the Crusher, and you have your drone with a big tachyon in its Trap. I plan to hit deep in the spire pointing down at the planet, where I think there’s an armored control center. Then Jump my drone into the other side. Pick a spire but don’t actually intersect, just get close. Go steal as big a piece of it as you can tow. Your drone is leaving Meglor after all, with Thandol prisoners I hope. I’ll launch my Nova, then I’ll Jump the drone to intersect the moment you say you got away with a chunk of that ship.”

“Guess I’m glad I didn’t kill that slippery damned Ravager after all. This could be more worthwhile. I have Grumpy feeding the Jump coordinates…” She paused a moment.

“Done. As soon as the drone exits close by, another large Jump Hole should form, and it’ll rotate back to Tachyon Space and we’ll see if we bit off more than we can chew. Here we go.”

The drone vanished into a Jump Hole, and instantly reappeared adjacent to one of the edges leading away from the spire that Thad was going to blast with the Nova. It formed another event horizon, far larger than it required for moving itself, and rotated out of Normal Space. A remarkably large, perfect section of a sphere, cut nearly a tenth of a mile deep into the Crusher’s edge, and it vanished along with the drone. Gasses spewed into space, with specks embedded that had to be objects from the breached compartments. Even at the Sneaky Bastards distance, some of the magnified small tumbling specks resembled elephant-like silhouettes.

Maggi said, “I have it.”

Thad replied softly, “Say goodbye to the rest of it.” Instantly, a half-ton prototype Nova II vanished from Thad’s drone, and reappeared within the thick solid carbon steel shell surrounding the Alternate Combat Center, of the soon to be fragmented Crusher. The much larger mass of the drone clanship then Jumped into the other side of the Crusher. In the vacuum of space, the Empire’s Trumpet disintegrated silently in a brilliant flare of light, which illuminated the night side of Meglor in its harsh glow.

It was spectacular, and as history would later record, it was the last time one of these enormous Crushers, a symbol of the projected power of the Empire and the Emperor, was ever deliberately sent into combat with smaller, more nimble spacecraft. A determined enemy could exploit the same principle that empire technology believed had no defense. After all, their Decoherence launchers used that principle for warhead delivery. An object could reenter Normal Space from Tachyon Space, even if inside another object.

The military minds of the Empire, Thandol as well as their three security species, would long believe there were humans aboard all of the ships that attacked at Meglor. That was because the Kobani ability to use undetectable Comtap communications between an operator in Normal Space, and an AI operating a drone in Tachyon Space, was not a technology the Empire possessed, or suspected was possible. It was simpler to think that suicidal humans, who had defeated the suicidal Krall, had expended their lives this way. Certainly none of the security forces would do this for the Empire, which had previously defeated their species. The Thandol placed considerable value on their lives, so this was a combat technique they refused to consider.

“Maggi, it will take too long to haul that entire piece home with us, so Jump it ten light years back along our arrival trail, and we’ll rendezvous there. I want to sort out how many prisoners might have survived, and select some we’ll take back with us. There’s no doubt that the Empire will be able to follow our trail to where we stop, and find that section of the Crusher. We can leave anyone we don’t want to take with us behind, to be rescued.”

“There could be a lot of them, Thad. When we captured two prisoners from a much smaller piece of a Smasher at Zanzibar, it had automatic sealing of compartments and corridors. That Crusher probably did too, and I caught a big piece. They might act hostile, and there are only ten of us to oppose them.”

Sarge discounted that worry. “They’re trapped in isolated compartments, and many are probably unarmed. Besides, we sure as hell wouldn’t hesitate to take on the Krall this way, and these people were afraid of the Krall.”

“Good point. I hate to keep agreeing with you. Makes the Universe seem out of kilter, somehow. The drone is on its way. Even hauling a mass ten times its own weight it will be there in about five minutes in T-cubed travel. Are we going after it now, Thad?”

“Yes, in a second.” He spoke to the entire complement next. “Attention, anyone with an operational drone. Identify something big to intersect with, and Jump. We don’t want to leave any drone behind that’s intact. We’re about to follow Maggi’s drone, to conduct a search for prisoners.”

Five brilliant flashes appeared rapidly, one of them in an intact dock segment, and four others were Ragnar ships that were uncontrolled and easy to hit. When the Sneaky Bastard Jumped away from Meglor, the repair docks were in great need of repair themselves. Replacement was probably the more apropos term.

****

“Why aren’t we dead?”

Captain Halder’s adjutant twisted his tentacles in confusion. “Sire? I don’t understand. We only have weak glow panels for a day or two of light, there is no atmosphere outside this transport car, we have only the inflatable environment bubbles with two days of air, and our ship appears to have suffered a catastrophe from a second Federation attack. With all the destruction in this system, we are likely to die before we are rescued. Probably not by the Ragnar, to whom we were closest when evidently we were hit that second time. They wouldn’t make us a high priority to save unless a Thandol were supervising them. Do you wish death had come instantly?”

“No. But the only weapon humans would have used against the Emperor’s Trumpet is one of their horrible, wasteful bombs, which appear inside matter. I would have expected us to die instantly if they had used another one. Nevertheless, we must somehow be trapped in a large detached fragment of the ship, but it isn’t tumbling, as I’d expect it to be from a blast.

“We were over halfway to our destination when the lights went out and the car stopped. I think the enemy must have hit the ACC for us lose all power, but an explosive wave-front so close to us should have sped debris along the vacuum tunnel, and we would have been destroyed.” He did a Thandol shrug, using just his left trunk, the other trunk holding him steady in free fall. The implication was that they had not experienced an explosion.

He made a disdainful tentacle flip in the dim pale red light. “No matter what happened, these humans are wasteful, destructive, and reckless in combat. They apparently emulate the barbaric Krall technique of suicidal use of their own ships, to rotate from Tachyon Space within their opponent’s ship. How else could this species have won against those self-destructive monsters, unless they emulated them?”

There suddenly was a feel of vibrations through the sides of the car, and their state of freefall was challenged by a sudden lateral force, which required their trunks to tighten their grips, securing them from drifting around. The Thandol, despite being a long time space going species, had never been comfortable without gravity. Their large first stomach mainly stored masticated vegetation before it was moved through a lengthy intestinal system, where fermentative processes broke down the cellulose via the activity of prodigious quantities of bacteria. The volumes of their innards made the absence of gravity a problem for retaining their most recent meals, and Halder and his adjutant had been at a breakfast browse when the attack began. The unexpected movement disrupted their precarious intestinal stability, but the movement itself stirred hopes that rescue was at hand.

“Lieutenant Temthra, you are closer to the tool chest. Find something hard to use to clang on the sides of the car to attract attention. You may be wrong. There might be rescuers coming after all.”

“Yes, Sire. However, there is a vacuum outside in the tube line, so they probably won’t hear that.”

“We felt their vibrations, perhaps they will feel ours. They certainly will not if we don’t make any, will they?”

The clanging started, and the response was more rapid than expected, as external vibrations drew closer and stronger. There soon were reflected lights in the transport line’s tunnel, seen through the single external viewport provided at the front of the car. Travel in the closed tubes was boring, so there was just the one small forward port, and it revealed narrow beams of lights that obviously were aimed around the sides of the car from its rear.

“Sire, it must be Ragnar searchers, because the lights are less red tinted than ours.”

Halder’s uncertain soft bugling note from his free trunk hinted at his doubt. “Perhaps it’s another species. The Ragnar home star is more orange than the slight bluish tint of these lights.” He experienced a trace of disquiet.

There were a sharp three taps followed by two taps on the side of the car that startled them both. Lieutenant Temthra immediately repeated the pattern back. They could feel the car shake slightly and heard a scraping sound as their rescuers worked their way around the sides of the car, which largely filled the transportation tube.

“We’re apparently about to be rescued.” Halder acknowledged to his adjutant. He was looking beyond his Lieutenant, out the port at the spots of light moving across the curved walls.

An alien creature, with multiple bright blue eyes suddenly looked inside, causing Halder to push away in shock, losing the grip that his right trunk had tenuously maintained without gravity, his large body rotating. He simultaneously lost his breakfast, in a violent spasm that coated his companion and one side of the car.

Temthra, in an uncontrolled spontaneous reaction was unable to contain his revulsion, and he abruptly lost his own breakfast, striving to avoid coating his superior.

Maggi, looking through the viewport, her blue-white helmet lights and blue weapons modules illuminating the interior, nudged Reynolds, who was still off to the side and couldn’t see into the car. “Sarge, there are two naval officers inside, and one is very high ranking, based on his insignia. These are definitely keepers, and you can take both as your prisoners. I’ll bag the next ones we find.” She pushed off hard in free fall, moving rapidly down the airless transport tube.